If the younger generation wants to know the keys to success, they need to follow the success sequence published by Bradford Wilcox and Wendy Wang. They say that the millennial generation is “more likely to flourish financially if they follow the “success sequence.” They say, you need to get at least a high school degree, work full-time, and marry before having any children, in that order.

Their recent study at the American Enterprise Institute has the title, The Millennial Success Sequence: Marriage, Kids, and the “Success Sequence” among Young Adults. They persuasively argue if millennials follow this success sequence, they will have a 97 percent chance of not being poor by the time they reach their young adult years. In fact, 86 percent of those studied had family incomes in the middle class or above.

Their study reminded me of another study posted by William Galston. Many years ago, he found that in order to avoid being poor you must do three things: (1) graduate from high school, (2) wait until age 20 to have children, and (3) wait until getting married to have children. He has found that young people who follow these rules have a 92 percent chance of staying above the poverty line. By contrast, a young person who breaks just one of these rules, has a 79 percent chance of ending up below the poverty line.

In a more recent op-ed, William Galston (who served in the Clinton Administration) made it even simpler. Want to know the best poverty cure? Get married. Single parenthood hurts all children, and black children bear the greatest brunt of the harm. He even goes on to say that cohabitation is not a replacement for marriage. Most cohabiting couples only stay together for about 18 months on average.

All of these different studies come to the same conclusion. Marriage is important, and the keys to success are to follow what is now being called the “success sequence.”

What is the American Creed? That is a question David Gelernter asks in his book, America-Lite. He has been on my radio program to talk about his book and his op-ed that appeared in the Wall Street Journal.

He is a fascinating individual. He received two degrees in classical Hebrew literature, but then became a professor of computer science at Yale University. Some have called him a “rock star” in the world of computing. You might also remember that he was one of the people who was critically injured when he opened a mail bomb send by “the Unabomber.”

He believes that we need to return to the principles that made this country great. Unfortunately, he says “many of us don’t know what they are, or think they can’t work.” He blames the public schools and the academy for this failure to pass on the basic ideals that have served America so well for centuries.

He laments that: “Almost no one believes that our public schools are doing a passable job of teaching American and Western civilization.” Textbooks and class lectures in our education system today often start with the assumption that America and Western ideals are bad for civilization. He concludes that: “Many American children have never heard a good word for the United States, the West, Judaism or Christianity their whole lives.”

He also laments that our “American culture is in the hands of intellectuals” which he says are usually people “born with high IQ and low common sense.” He gives lots of examples of this. You can probably think many other examples of people that are very bright but lacking in basic common sense.

America’s creed is quite simple: “Freedom, equality, democracy and America as the promised land.” The early founders believed in America as a city on a hill, as did many presidents right up to President Reagan.

It is time to use our American creed to evaluate those who are teaching our kids and those who are leading our nation.

Back in 1996, Samuel Huntington wrote The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. He predicted the current conflict between Islam and the West.

In my book, Understanding Islam and Terrorism, I show how this clash of civilizations has had a profound impact on missions. In the past, countries that were closed to the gospel tended to be communist countries. Even so, there was still a significant amount of Christian growth in countries behind the Iron Curtain and Bamboo Curtain. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, many of these countries are more open to the gospel than ever before. Meanwhile, persecution of Christians remains in China.

But a new phenomenon has emerged. Muslim countries are now the most resistant to the message of Christianity. Mission work is limited or even non-existent in many of these Muslim countries. This, I believe, represents the greatest challenge for missions in the 21st century: reaching the Muslim world for Christ.

Samuel Huntington also predicted a growing conflict between western universalism and Muslim militancy. In other words, the conflict is between liberal western democracies and Muslim countries. This presents a major challenge for Christians trying to reach Muslims. When they see the West with its immorality and decadence, they reject it and Christianity. After all, they reason, these are Christian countries and this is what they produce. Therefore, we should be quick to point out as Christians we also disagree with much of what some of these countries produce.

Whether we are missionaries overseas or missionaries in our backyard, we need to begin to understand the nature of Islam and bring the message of the gospel to the Muslims we meet. I believe Samuel Huntington is correct in his analysis, and we should begin to understand the changing world around us so that we can be more effective for Christ.

America is a divided country. Os Guinness in his book, Last Call for Liberty, argues that the American republic is suffering its gravest crisis since the Civil War. He believes that the root of this disagreement is two different definitions of freedom.

One view of freedom is embodied in “1776 and the American Revolution.” The other view arose in “1789 and the French Revolution.” The first can be found in the Declaration of Independence that owes its formulation to the Protestant Reformation and even earlier in the ideas found the book of Exodus in the Bible. The second can be found in Frances “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité” that ended in the Reign of Terror. To that we can add Marx’s “triumph of the proletariat” and in the policies of Stalin and Mao Zedong.

His book asks ten questions that makeup the chapters in the book. When he was in studio with me talking about the book, I mentioned that few American could answer the questions in the affirmative. He asks, “Do you know where your freedom comes from?” Even fewer could offer good answers to questions like, “How do you plan to sustain freedom?”

He also addresses the question, “How will you make the world safe for diversity?” Here we have two starkly different visions of public life. On the one side are proponents of what Richard John Neuhaus called a naked public square that would exclude religion and religious expressions from public life. Proponents of a sacred public square would give preference to one religion. He advocates for a civil public square where citizens of all faiths are free to enter and engage public life on their basis of their faith.

This book provides wise counsel on how Christians can be at the forefront of bringing America back to a proper understanding of freedom.

If you do an online search of the term “cultural Marxism,” you will see a Wikipedia entry that dismisses it as a “conspiracy theory” that is supposedly trying to take over Western culture. Actually it is the dominant form of Marxism in America and in much of the West today.

Dr. Paul Kengor was on the Point of View radio talk show with me to talk about his recent article about cultural Marxism. He explained that cultural Marxism began about a century ago in Germany because the proponents felt that orthodox Marxism was too limiting and too narrow. They wanted revolutionary changes in marriage, sexuality, and family.

They looked to the universities as a place when their ideas could be launched. They would organize the students, the artists, and the media to transform Western society. Instead of focusing on an economic war, they wanted to bring a cultural war.

One of the key figures in cultural Marxism was Antonio Gramsci who taught that they should seize the “cultural means of production.” That would be the media and the universities. He believed that the social transformation would be able to “march through the institutions.”

One place where cultural Marxism is evident today is in what is called “critical theory.” Paul Kengor reminded us that Barack Obama’s alma mater, Occidental College, has a Department of Critical Theory and Social Justice. It promises to instruct students in the principles of “Marxism, psychoanalysis, the Frankfurt School, deconstruction, critical race studies, queer theory, feminist theory, postcolonial theory.”

If you have been near a college campus lately, this should all sound very familiar. This is not a “conspiracy theory” but an accurate picture of the march of cultural Marxism through the institutions.